Maps for Lost Lovers

him earlier tonight he had thought, for one terrible moment, that, in addition to everything else, she had somehow found out about Suraya: rumours do begin and widen their rings with time. He sets off again, under the tall pines that the children are fond of climbing, Charag once saying that when he was up there he felt like a bird clinging to a giraffe’s neck. The night-air is frozen solid by now but, as he walks, the heat of his blood melts a burrow for him to slip through, the lake continuing to dream audibly in the darkness. He stops where the path forks and, instead of beginning the journey that would take him back home, he takes the path that leads to the cemetery, the narrow passage that is lined in summer with thimble-shaped foxgloves attracting gauzy Peacock butterflies. Could Suraya be visiting her mother’s resting-place in the darkness— avoiding him? Climbing a hawthorn-planted slope that is increasingly steep under his feet, he ends up suddenly lost in the fringe of bracken whose tips curve like violin necks, not knowing when he had left the path that in late summer is covered with the red paste of dropped hawthorn berries. He is very high up and can look down on a stretch of the lake shore that would take five minutes to walk along. He is lost, alone here with his mind. Every now and then he steps into a stream, one of the many that go towards the lake and the paths of which the children know the way they know the lines on the palms of their hands.
    He is lost. His hands are trembling with the cold and as he puts them into his pockets he discovers a matchbox in one of them. Charag had put the coat on to go outside into the cold for a smoke. He takes the matchbox from his pocket but there isn’t any strength in the fingers for a forceful-enough strike: he just sheds a little three-dimensional constellation of orange sparks at each attempt. He achieves a flame successfully with a deafening hiss the sixth or seventh time, and raises the light in the air to see where he is. The oval flame colours the smoke that feathers out of its circle of light. Further match-heads unfurl a path of light along the soaked frost-singed grass for him. He is shivering. He decides not to screw the lid back onto the bottle after he’s taken a mouthful. It’s hard to believe even in the existence of the sun at an hour like this.
    He stops: there, ahead of him, is movement in the darkness.
    He stands still—there is a throb of expectancy in the air, a slight quiver. He walks towards where the movement had been and the boy turns when he hears him approach. It’s the Hindu boy whose lover was beaten to death whilst she was being cleansed of the djinns. The whites of his eyes are shining in the moonlight: he looks away in the direction he had been earlier, enraptured by something.
    Shamas stops where he is, not wishing to frighten him by moving towards him.
    “Can you see her, uncle-ji? She’s there, look.”
    “What are you doing out here at this hour?”
    He points into the trees. “Can you see her ghost? I am with her too. Both of us there.”
    There is of course nothing there. The boy has become unhinged. “Ghosts? People said it was my brother Jugnu and his girlfriend Chanda. Jugnu’s hands glowing as always. Chanda’s stomach glowing brightly because of the baby she’s carrying. Three ghosts. Two adults and an unborn baby.”
    The boy shakes his head. “I heard about that. But it’s not them. It’s me and her: her stomach glows because that’s where on her dead body my letter was placed, the letter I wrote to her on the day of the funeral. And my hands glow because of the orchids I am carrying for her.”
    The boy is hallucinating perhaps, or sleepwalking. “You should go back home, put. It’s cold.”
    “I know you don’t believe me, uncle-ji. But it is the two of us, over there.” He is far away, staring blankly.
    Shamas moves closer and manoeuvres his face in front of the boy’s face until their eyes finally engage: “You are not dead, you are alive—standing beside me. Come with me, I’ll walk you home. Remind me where you live?”
    The boy looks around to find his bearings, and then sets off, Shamas accompanying him in silence, knowing he mustn’t leave him.
    They emerge onto a lakeside road, the boy having led him out of the forest he had got lost in. The boy motions with a hand towards a house on the other side of the road: “She was married to the man in that house. He is obsessed with